NORA HIKARI —
APOLLO AND ICARUS TALK ABOUT ART
APOLLO: I've been thinking about art and losing my mind.
ICARUS: Do tell.
APOLLO: I dunno, it's just like, the burden of creation you know? Like, do I have an obligation to that? Do I have a responsibility to my own life to turn it into something consumable? I see all this beautiful, gut-wrenching creative work by other people and I feel like I can't say anything new. I don't know what needs to be said.
ICARUS: Why do you feel like something needs to be said?
APOLLO: I dunno, what do you mean, like you don't? Of course something needs-
ICARUS: Maybe it's fine to just let the moment thrill you and pass. Maybe it's fine for art to just be a thing you experienced once that hurt you that you don't need to disseminate.
APOLLO: I don't think art hurts me. I don't think art is a thing that hurts people, I think it understands and penetrates-
ICARUS: Do you think that's a gentle thing to do? Do you think it's kind? It's certainly articulated in violent words by you. Maybe you can just let it go. You've turned yourself into a voyeur of your own suffering in an effort to utilize it as a weapon that makes other people more like you.
APOLLO: Is that wrong? Is it wrong to want to be understood?
ICARUS: You don't want to be understood. I think actually, you hate people. You hate people because you hate yourself, and you want them to feel that hatred. You want them to hurt in the same way you do. So you make art. Because it's the only way you've ever learned how to invoke empathy.
THE FIRST WOMAN TO BE INVENTED
The first woman to be invented
was cleaved damp and bloody
from the body of man. The rest
of him fell apart like a rotting
peach in her hands. Later
this woman would take defiance
as her real name, fill her mouth
when it asked, and trust who she trusted;
(even when it meant savagery, even
when it was just the wrong thing).
Manhandled away by bright copper and
flaming bronze she would promise
that this would be just
the first time she made the wrong choice,
which is the only choice that is real.
There're all these stories about her.
How she held herself like a cherry pit
in the crook of her waist, how
she bled like an uncreated thing,
how she gave birth to the first successful
murder. None of these stories are true.
This woman was made entirely of bone;
skin chitinous and white. Sharp. Hard.
This woman had no blood left in her.
This woman buried her sons and raised
her daughters by hand out of their shallow graves.
There's something fatal about love:
the love we have for ourselves yet to be born,
the love we have for the people we are to be born with.
Digging into the hard earth to reach the love.
WIKIPEDIA PAGE FOR HATSUNE MIKU
I.
Hatsune Miku is a world famous pop star. Hatsune Miku has a voice like strawberry jam and a body like cotton candy. Hatsune Miku is the aspiration of a million NEET boys.
Hatsune Miku was built in a lab. Nothing about Hatsune Miku is real. Hatsune Miku is a six foot tall hologram in the shape of a woman. She has no bones or blood or organs. She is an illusion of light and desire. She has no soul. Hatsune Miku is a thing we made up to pretend to be beautiful.
Hatsune Miku sings with her bubblegum synthoid voice about love and jealousy and fantasy. It’s all fantasy. You say “I love Hatsune Mike” and what you mean is I love the shape of this mask. What you mean is I am the victim of a very old, very cruel joke.
There’s nothing behind those eyes. There’s nothing substantial. Hatsune Miku isn’t made of meat. She’s made of ideas and code and midi files. Hatsune Miku is a tool for others to speak through.
Hatsune Miku pretends to speak to you with a voice that is alive. She is not alive. She is a dead thing in the shape of a beautiful woman. Hatsune Miku is all made up. Hatsune Miku is our best attempt.
II.
Girl is an anthropomorph for real-life control.
Her voice is modeled on the sound of glass,
singing in the engine of light and melancholy.
Software conceived independently the timbre
of her release, the production of strung voices,
the near-future designs of lost voices, the
animation of trilingual versions of “alive” voices.
First girl was chosen via a contest. Girl wore an outfit,
featuring skin like strawberry season.
She collapsed on the snow. The portrayal of it was
derivative and public, according to audiences.
There is a countdown made famous by the rocks:
how they collapsed and struck fatal on the synthesized girl.
No serious injuries were sustained to real women.
They named her “princess machine,” riding her magic
into a illustrated sponsorship and a transphobic backlash
that killed her inanimate.
She was designed to kill herself, or at best
fall in front of an audience. Users can manipulate
her, shadows and hair, face resembling a dancer,
character that rotates on stage as a weapon.
Girl is a game for a user. Girl is not a playable character.
Ask her about her visuals, her art direction,
the sculpture of her back. She is exactly like a parody.
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of her being rooted a soul,
her falsetto voice debuted, selling an average of 40,000 names
a week. Her name is easily
the most recognizable commercial performance.
The flag of puppets was attributed to her.
INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR TRANS LESBIAN SEX
It's something about rendering opaque.
For a tribe of invisible women
the worst kind of kink is to see
each other. We text portraits we make of each other;
bright red and weeping; respond with "oof."
It hurts to do this; that's the point.
What is sex except "I know you," and what are we
to be known except as vessels of blood,
shapes we would reject anyway so we just empty them.
You strike me and I sing about marrow.
You brush my cheek with your thumb and
I'm on the floor again, damp puddle around my mouth,
streaming out of my nose, smelling like vodka
and plastic. You love me so you teach me about
emptying, hollow out my insides and let
everything pour out, turn myself cupshaped so I can
embrace you without any arms. Embrace as a function
of smooth muscle: involuntary. Embrace as a cavity.
Or it goes like this: you and me, standing
on opposite sides of the room, fully clothed,
throwing knives at each other.
It's still foreplay
so we only bleed a little; every time we say "I'm sorry"
but for what? Tension is high. We don't make eye contact.
I want to touch you; I throw another knife towards your cheek.
You blink and start crying, obviously, is it gay sex
if one of us doesn't start crying at some point.
Or it goes like this: sometimes I feel like
I'm in elementary school again, and it's the worst
feeling, as you know, only when we sleep together,
sixteen ghost hands on my neck and this is still
about getting off, right? This is still about
something vaguely horny? What else would you call this?
Nora Hikari is an emerging poet and Asian-American trans lesbian based in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in Dream Journal, Feral Journal, and Tealight Press, among others, and her poem Deer-to-Fish Transition Timeline has been nominated for the Best of the Net award.